baby copperband butterfly, wont eat anything frozen food.

[zheka757]

this butterfly fish is about 2'' when i had him in quarantine tank, all he would eat is live brine shrimp, anything frozen he would ignore. after quarantine, i put him into my 60g frag tank. its established tank with bunch of pods/worms/aiptasia. observing this fish, every 3-4 minutes he will find something in a tank to eat. he wont touch aiptasia yet, but I did see him going after baby bristle worms and pods. there is no other fish in a tank that will compete for same food. is that enough nutrients for one to survive?

 

[KrisReef]

Once it decides that the tank is safe it will get around to eating more things. I have one that seemed to be ignoring Aiptasia and then one day there were a few missing. I fed mine fresh clams and it has learned to eat the foods I throw in.
Hopefully next week you will notice that there are a few aiptasia missing.

 

[arking_mark]

2nd on clam on the half shell.

 

[zheka757]

I forgot about clam, definently need to try those. But even if that fails can baby coperband survive on pods and worms in a tank? And once he will introduce himself to aiptasia, there is about 100 of them in a tank.

 

[Gtinnel]

IME you will have to get it eating foods that you feed for long term success. He will wipe out all of the food sources that he has naturally in your tank. I had a huge aiptasia problem in my tank and at first my CBB wasn’t eating them, then one day he started eating them and I went from hundreds of aiptasia to none within a few days.

I’ve had mine for 8 months now and he still will not eat anything other than live. He has occasionally taken a bite or two of frozen food but he won’t reliably eat it so I feed mine live white worms everyday.

 

[MPS]

I brought a tiny CBB home a few months ago also. Maybe this method that worked for me will also work for you.
I was growing my own pods and that helped keep the CBB healthy while it adjusted. Since it eagerly picked at the rock work, I tried shutting off all the flow in the tank and depositing the thawed mysis shrimp along the rock work with a turkey baster. That worked like a champ. The CBB immediately started going after the frozen food that it found in the rocks and laying on the sand bed. A few days later, it learned that the the baster was the source of the food and it would swim up to it before I was able to get it near the rocks. It started eating food out of the spout and once that happened, it was an easy move to dispense the food into the water column. Now he eats frozen out of the water column under full flow.
None of the other fish, cardinals and a Tomini Tang bother it during feeding times; it’s just as aggressive as they are during breakfast.

 

[Tamberav]

this butterfly fish is about 2'' when i had him in quarantine tank, all he would eat is live brine shrimp, anything frozen he would ignore. after quarantine, i put him into my 60g frag tank. its established tank with bunch of pods/worms/aiptasia. observing this fish, every 3-4 minutes he will find something in a tank to eat. he wont touch aiptasia yet, but I did see him going after baby bristle worms and pods. there is no other fish in a tank that will compete for same food. is that enough nutrients for one to survive?

Not likely no and even aiptasia is mostly water. I would get some live black worms to try.